Deferred Prosecution Under Article 191: the five-year clock, the supervision period and the tests you must take

Two periods run at once, and they do not end on the same day.

The five years. Article 191/2 provides that in an investigation opened under this article a decision is given deferring the opening of a public prosecution for five years, and it says this is done without seeking the conditions in Article 171 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. That exclusion matters: the four cumulative conditions of the ordinary deferral in Article 171/3 — no earlier prison sentence for an intentional offence, a view that you would refrain from offending, a judgement that deferral is more useful than prosecution, and full compensation of the loss — are not asked of you here. The prosecutor warns you at the time what follows a breach, and since the amendment of 28 March 2023 the decision is notified to law-enforcement units as well.

The supervision. Article 191/3 is a different clock. A supervision measure — denetimli serbestlik — is applied for at least one year, and the prosecutor may extend it in six-month blocks, on the proposal of the probation directorate or of his own motion, by not more than two further years. Three years is the ceiling on supervision; five years remains the length of the deferral either way.

Read the decision for two dates, not one: the day the five years begin, and the period fixed for supervision. People plan around the shorter figure and find the file still live in year four.

The testing obligation is one sentence of Article 191/3: to establish whether you have used a narcotic or stimulant substance during the deferral period, the public prosecutor decides to refer you to the relevant institution at least twice a year. Three points follow from that wording.

• Twice a year is a floor, not a schedule. The Code sets a minimum frequency and no maximum. More frequent referral is lawful, and the timing is not something you arrange around a work rota or a flight.
• The referral is a prosecutor's decision, not an invitation. Attending is part of the obligations whose breach is measured under Article 191/4. Failing to appear is not a missed medical appointment; it is an entry in the record the probation directorate keeps.
• Treatment can be added. Article 191/3 also allows a person under the supervision measure to be made subject to treatment where that is considered necessary. Once ordered, its requirements sit alongside the obligations and are breached in the same way.

None of this is an exit ban. Article 191 says nothing about leaving the country; what forbids departure, where it exists, is a separate judicial-control obligation imposed earlier in the file, and it does not lift itself when the deferral is decided — the two documents are read separately, as set out in the note on travel bans during a criminal case. What Article 191 does instead is require your presence often enough that a life organised in another country becomes hard to sustain.

Article 191/4 lists three grounds, and a public prosecution is opened where any one of them occurs during the deferral period:

• (a) persisting in not complying with the obligations imposed on you, or with the requirements of the treatment applied;
• (b) buying, accepting or holding a narcotic or stimulant substance again for use;
• (c) using a narcotic or stimulant substance.

Sub-paragraph (a) contains a threshold the other two do not: the Code requires persistence in non-compliance, not a single lapse. A missed appointment explained at the time is not a pattern of absence, and that difference is argued out of the record the directorate keeps. Sub-paragraphs (b) and (c) carry no such qualifier.

Article 191/5 then closes off a hope people commonly hold. Fresh buying, accepting or holding for use, or using, during the deferral period is treated as a ground of breach under paragraph four and is not made the subject of a separate investigation and prosecution. That is not leniency: the new conduct does not produce a new small case, it reopens the original one, and Article 191/1 — two to five years' imprisonment — comes back into play, increased by half under Article 191/10 where the act was committed in a public place, or a place open to the public, lying within two hundred metres of the boundary of a school, dormitory, hospital, barracks, place of worship or similar building or facility used collectively for treatment, education, military or social purposes.

Article 191/6 removes the second chance: once a prosecution has been opened under paragraph four, a deferral cannot be given in a later investigation alleging that the offence has been committed again. Time does not help either — through Article 191/9 the rule in Article 171/4 applies, so limitation does not run during the deferral period.

Article 191/7 states the outcome plainly: if the suspect has not acted contrary to the obligations in paragraph four and has not breached the prohibitions during the deferral period, a decision that there are no grounds for prosecution is given. No trial, no sentence, no conviction to enter.

Something does remain on paper, but in a system of its own. Article 191/9 applies Article 171 where this article is silent, and Article 171/5 provides that deferral decisions are recorded in a register kept for that purpose, usable only where a prosecutor, judge or court requests them in connection with an investigation or prosecution. What that does and does not mean for a certificate you may be asked to produce abroad is set out under the Turkish criminal record.

A second five-year period is regularly confused with the first. Under Article 191/8, where a prosecution has been brought under Article 188 for manufacture and trafficking, or under Article 190 for facilitating use, and it is understood at the trial stage that the act falls solely within Article 191, the court defers the announcement of the judgment within the framework of that article. That is hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması under Article 231 of the Code of Criminal Procedure: a five-year supervision period under Article 231/8, ending under Article 231/10 with the judgment set aside and the case dismissed where no intentional offence is committed and the obligations are kept. A different mechanism at a different stage, explained under suspended sentences and HAGB.

Which of the two you are in was settled long before the clock started, by whether the file was written up under Article 191 or under Article 188. That question is dealt with on the page on narcotics possession and use in Türkiye.